March Reading List - Defining Your Space

While February’s reading list was about finding one’s direction, March’s reading list is about defining one’s space.  This selection of topic was inspired by my inability to knuckle down and work on my manuscript.  My energy was stagnant from constantly reworking my story in my head.  To get the energy moving again, I looked thoughtfully toward my home office, which is my creative space.

Here is a picture of my home office, and what I perceive to be wrong with it.  (I’m a bit of an amateur Feng Shui enthusiast, and I applied principles of this art to the space.)

The primary problem was that the office was in the bedroom in the first place.  Although my bedroom is large enough to easily accommodate my desk, it is not the ideal place for it.  Every morning when I wake up, the desk taunts me, telling me to get to work (not always a bad thing).  Every night when I put my head to the pillow, I worry that my word counts weren’t enough to get me through twenty more chapters by summer.  The pressure just shut me down completely.  It is no longer an inviting place to sit and create.

Writer’s Map Fraught with Peril

Inspired by my reading list this month, I made a map to illustrate my writing angst.  (Click on it to enlarge):



Anybody been here?

As you can see, the most direct path to the Shangri-la of Creative Genius is through the Hardwork Hills and the mountainous (or should I say monotonous?) Revision Range.  This path is rigorous and challenging – one needs a lot of stamina to stay on the trail. 

            Most writers, I would guess, take alternate routes due to responsibilities, diversions, and frustrations from false starts.  Such scenic routes eventually intersect with the Road to Revision, a crossroads where we choose to stay on the current well-worn path of our lives or turn back onto the bumpy, dirty road of our creativity. 

Ten Boredom Busters inspired by T.S. Spivet

1.      Play a rousing game of Boggle.

2.      Get a Cheeseburger Happy Meal and critique the crappiness of the toy inside.

3.      Compose a tune on a slide whistle.

4.      Make a placemat with your family tree on it.

5.      Take photographs of random things you pass on the road.

6.      Try to guess what’s in Gracie’s dish she calls “the Next Best Thing” and make up a recipe for it.

7.      Make Aunt Doretta’s cocktail, The Coyote Toyte, and see if you can drink it with “a sensational  degree of regularity”.

8.      Watch old cowboy movies.

9.      Read a comic strip and create a fifth panel for it.

10.  Drink spiked eggnog and make a hullabaloo with badminton rackets.

Book Club Recipe – T.S. Spivet’s Honey Nut Cheerios Bars

Poor T.S. Spivet – his brother died, his Father doesn’t understand him, his mother is self-absorbed.  I wish I could make it better for him – give him a cookie and a hug to make everything alright again.  His favorite food is Honey Nut Cheerios with which he says he has an almost “philosophical obsession”:

            “A dry bowl of cereal has a way of calling you.  I doused the Cheerios with milk and dove headlong into the delicious world of tiny crunchy doughnuts.  When I was done, I performed my favorite part of the ritual: the drinking of the leftover milk that had become lightly infused with sweet strains of honey, as if a magical honey cow had dispensed her milk right into my bowl.”        

-          from The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet

T.S. made me think about how I haven’t made any homemade goodies for my kids in a while (I think the last treat I made was at Christmas).  In order to feel I’m at least a smidge more nurturing than Dr. Clair, I decided to make some tasty (and easy) Honey Nut Cheerio Bars.  Here’s the recipe:

Ingredients:

½ cup honey (or Karo syrup if you don’t mind corn syrup)

½ cup sugar

½ cup peanut butter (if you use crunchy, you can omit the almonds)

½ cup almonds

5 cups Honey Nut Cheerios

Grease a 13 x 9” pan with cooking spray or butter.  (I line my pan with foil, then spray it with cooking spray).  Put honey and sugar into a large saucepan, stirring and bringing to a boil.  Add peanut butter, and stir until melted.  Remove from heat.  Pour in HN Cheerios and almonds, and stir until the nuts and cereal are completely coated.  Spoon mixture into greased pan, patting it down until nice and even.  Allow to cool for 15 minutes.  Cut into bars.  (If you used a foil liner, lift foil out of pan and cut.  The foil method makes for cleaner and easier cutting.)

Serve to kids (or your book club) alongside a large glass of cold milk so they get that yummy magical honey cow taste.

"No Direction in Life" Book List

This is my complete February Reading List - sorry to post so late.  Check out my March Reading List which I plan to post by March 8^th.

·    New Release : The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet, by Reif Larsen; Penguin Press 2009.  What better way to find my direction than by reading a book about a boy cartographer?

·    Classic: Gulliver’s Travels, by Jonathan Swift; The Easton Press, 1976.  This was the only book that T.S.’s great-great-great grandfather read other than the bible.

·    Nonfiction: You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination, by Katherine Harmon, Princeton Architectural Press, October 1, 2003.  T.S. mapped his personal geographies from how to climb a mountain to shake hands with God, to the flow of dinner conversation at home, to his top-nine favorite movies and their thematic relationships.  A great way to discover my own personal geography.

·    Juvenile: S is for Smithsonian: American’s Museum Alphabet, by Marie and Roland Smith, Illustrated by Gijsbert van Frankenhuyzen; Sleeping Bear Press, 2010.  T.S. is going to the Smithsonian to receive the Baird Award.  I thought this alphabet book would be too easy for my seven- and nine-year olds, but I soon found that even I had a lot to learn from the informative text.  Fascinating stuff.

·    Self-improvement:  Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer, by Peter Turchi; Trinity University Press, 2004.  Turchi, a writer, uses the extended metaphor of writing as mapping the world of story. 

What to Read? Part 3: How to Make a Reading List

Last post, I introduced the Reader’s Formula for Selecting Books.  It looked like this:

Values ((Assets + x) – (Desires + y) – Liabilities – Requirements) = Optimal Reading List

This post, I am going to give an example from my reading life to demonstrate how to use this formula.  The first part of the formula is “values”, which I said are variable.  They determine what experiences we deem important or not, and influence our judgment and behaviors.  For simplicity, and to avoid sounding like a Sociology 101 text, I call this “life acting upon us”, because essentially, our life circumstances give rise to our values.

            So, what do I value these days?  What filter is life applying to me to influence which experiences I let in and which ones I release?  Lately, I have been feeling adrift, directionless.  After two years of working regularly to revise my manuscript, I find myself ready to give up on the project.  My mind resists quitting, but my behaviors tell me I already have.  I can’t make myself work on it anymore, yet nothing has replaced this piece of work in my mind.  No new ideas.  No desire to do anything else.  I am adrift on a plain of apathy.  How to find my way?

            I decide to read to take my mind off my failure.  I browse the stacks in the library, hoping to be inspired by something.  My eye lands upon the cover of a book, featured by the library staff.  It is called The Selected Works by T. S. Spivet by Reif Larsen.  I have seen this book many times, and although intrigued by it, I never took it home.  This particular day, feeling lost and in need of a map to navigate my professional aspirations, I thought, “What better way to reorient myself than to read a book about a boy cartographer?”  If being lost was what life was giving me, then finding my way was what I valued.  Therefore, in my reader’s formula, v = Finding my way.

What to Read? Part 2: The Reader’s Formula

In my last post, I likened finding good books to dating, and I promised to share my process for choosing what to read next.  Consider me a matchmaker who helps “bind” books and readers (sorry for that).  In order to find a satisfying partner for a literary love affair, one needs some method of selection from a multitude of promising candidates – sort of like the method mathematician John Nash (whose life was depicted in A Beautiful Mind) developed for choosing which women he and his pals should pick up in a bar. (Keep in mind, I’m no schizophrenic supergenius, this isn’t anything like game theory, and we are just talking about books here lest anyone is confused and thinks they landed on an Internet dating site).

First, the reader must have a list of things he/she is looking for in a book, and the reader must consider his/her own limitations.  Here is what I know about my reading preferences as well as the constraints that work against me:

1. I want to read the best new releases when they come out instead of getting on the library’s wait list, but I can only afford one, maybe two hardcovers a month (my limitations are urgency and money).  I don’t have a lot of time to research (another limitation), so I will read reviews of only the newest – say, those released within the last three to six months. 
2. I don’t want to neglect the Classics because a well-rounded reader should make an effort to read what is timeless (if for no other reason than to appreciate references to these works in other literature).  I suppose the genealogist in me compels me to read Classics – I think we have better perspective of the present if we know what came before.  Mark Twain put it so aptly:  “‘Classic.’  A book which people praise and don’t read.”  (Ironic that Twain’s books are now classics, and I still haven’t read one.)
3. I like reading nonfiction as much as fiction.  Learning for the sake of learning is a value to me, and I’d like to be informed by more than just watching the evening news (which I avoid) or searching Wikipedia (to which I’m addicted).
4. My children are a priority, and I like to read the books they’re reading and preview things I think they’ll enjoy.  Children’s literature and YA are a couple of my favorite genres because the necessary read time is usually minimal. 
5. I am a writer, and need to read books that inspire and educate me so I’m more productive, creative, and efficient.  This type of reading might fall under self-improvement, career, or inspirational, and it helps us contribute our own verses to the world.   These materials are most directly related to real-life action.  For example, I might be reading Blogging for Dummies right now, which leads me to write a blog.